Replication of "Identifying the effect of mobilization on voter turnout through a natural experiment" (Kentaro Fukumoto and Yusaku Horiuchi), Electoral Studies, Vol. 44, pp. 192-202, 2016. 

* Description: 
Although numerous get-out-the-vote field experiments have identified the effects of particular mobilization tactics (e.g., canvassing, phone calls, direct mails) on voter turnout, we do not yet have a full understanding of the causal effect of overall mobilization. We study this by leveraging a natural experiment in Japan, in which the timing of a municipal election is as-if randomly assigned. The results show that almost concurrently held municipal elections boost these municipalities’ voter turnout in prefectural elections by one to two percentage points. We argue that some unique settings in Japan allow us not only to mitigate omitted variable bias but also to attribute the estimated effect only to mobilization, rather than the effects of cost sharing and psychological stimulus.

* Files included in this package:

- ReadMe.txt (this file)- Step1a_DataCleaning_covariates.do- Step1b_DataCleaning_JERRY.do- Step1c_DataCleaning_checkdata.do- Step2_BalanceTest.do- Step3a_Estimation.do- Step3b_Estimation2_interactions.do- Step3c_Estimation2_forAppendix.do
- Step4a_Maps.R
- Step4b_Coeff_Plots.R

- _data (file - contains data for replication)
	- data_for_maps.csv
	- JERRY_20050720.dta	- onoff.csv	- tokei_de_miru_shikuchoson_no_sugata_2001-2003.dta	- tokusima.dbf	- tokusima.shp	- tokusima.shx
- _figures (file - contains figures in paper and appendix)
	- Figure2_et.pdf	- Figure2_lt.pdf	- Figure3_et.pdf	- Figure3_lt.pdf	- Figure4.pdf	- FigureA1.pdf
- _temp (file - contains temp data)
	- checkdata_all.csv	- checkdata_tricky.csv	- checkdata_use.csv	- covariates.csv	- jerry.csv
- _output (file - contains results generated by .do files)
	- balancetest.csv	- estimation1.csv	- estimation2.csv	- regressiontable1.tex	- regressiontable2.tex	- replicationdata.csv	- replicationdata.dta

* Programs: Stata Version 13.1, R

* Additional programs required: N/A

* Process of Replication: 
The working directory (i.e., the folder with ReadMe and all Stata/R scripts) should be manually set. 
	(1) Run Step1a_DataCleaning_covariates.do	(2) Run Step1b_DataCleaning_JERRY.do
	(3) Run Step1c_DataCleaning_checkdata.do
	(4) Run Step2_BalanceTest.do
	(5) Run Step3a_Estimation.do
	(6) Run Step3b_Estimation2_interactions.do
	(7) Run Step3c_Estimation2_forAppendix.do
	(8) Run Step4a_Maps.R
	(9) Run Step4b_Coeff_Plots.R* Most Recent Date of Successful Replication: February 22, 2018